Holidays in the Sun

Michel Houellebecq is no stranger to controversy. His last novel, Les Particulesélémentaires, outraged the French Left by proposing that the liberal revolutionsof the 60s had not only failed, but left society worse off, and that the onlysolution would be to clone a new human species in a state of permanent orgasm.

The release of his latest novel, Platform, was accompanied by a seriesof lawsuits filed by four Muslim groups after the author referred to Islam asthe “dumbest religion” in an interview. The charge was “inciting racial hatred,”which Houellebecq vehemently denied, claiming, “I have never displayed the leastcontempt for Muslims. However, I have as much contempt as ever for Islam.”

Houellebecq proclaimed that it was his right as an author to criticize monotheisticreligions, qualifying his statements by claiming the Koran was inferior to theBible in terms of literary merit. “In literary terms, the Bible has several authors,some good and some as bad as crap. The Koran has only one author and its overallstyle is mediocre,” he said, adding “the Bible at least is beautifully writtenbecause the Jews have a heck of a literary talent.”

France’s national Arabic newspaper published a photograph of a drunken, disheveledHouellebecq with the headline “This Man Hates You.” No fatwas were issued thistime around, but Salman Rushdie did come to Houellebecq’s defense, writing inThe Guardian, “Platform is a good novel and Houellebecq is a fine writer who writesfor serious reasons and neither he nor his book deserves to be tarred and feathered.”

Although he was eventually cleared of the charges, Houellebecq claims that he’llnever again publish a book or give an interview because “it’s too much trouble.”

Rushdie is right. Houellebecq is a great writer. While Platform may not be hisbest novel, it certainly builds on the foundation he laid with his previous works.The idea behind Platform concerns “the death of the West.” For Houellebecq,competitive capitalism has resulted in our inability to relate and satisfy oneanother sexually. On the other side of the world, reasons Houellebecq, “you haveseveral billion people who have nothing, who are starving, who die young, wholive in conditions unfit for human habitation and who have nothing left to sellexcept their bodies and their unspoiled sexuality.” Seen from this light, theLeftist idea that sex tourism is exploitative seems absurd, as both parties areeffectively satisfying their human needs. A simple idea? It could be, but noteveryone agrees. And there are those who express dissent using weapons more dangerousthan the rhetoric of politically correct Westerners.

Michel, the novel’s anti-hero, is a depressingly mediocre individual, a Frenchmiddle-aged single civil servant whose interests don’t extend beyond sex and television.When his despised father is murdered by the Muslim brother of his housemaid, withwhom he’d been having an affair, Michel uses his inheritance to secure a placeon a package tour to Thailand. On holiday, Michel spends much of his time drinkingand buying sex. He repeatedly fails to connect in any meaningful way with histourist peers, despite the advances of Valérie, a beautiful young woman. Micheland Valérie eventually connect upon their return to Paris and fall in love.

It turns out that Valérie works as an executive in the tourist industry. Despiteher success, the popularity of the package tour is waning. She and her colleaguesare unable to figure out why. One night, on a business trip to Cuba, Michel getsdrunk and offers his opinion: What Europeans really want when they go on vacationisn’t just a holiday in some exotic locale, but bargain sex with the fetishizedOther in which they’re intimate with the locals, and more than just tourists.

When Valérie’s agency decides to put Michel’s theory into action by offering “Aphrodite”package tours, inviting local male and female prostitutes to ply their tradesat third-world beach resorts, the results are stunning. The once-empty resortsare suddenly overflowing with horny Germans, Spanish, French and Italians. Nearthe end of the novel, Valérie and Michel decide to personally sample the nectarof their successful creation, booking a free vacation at one of Valerie’s Thairesorts.

Rich, happy, successful, in love, Michel and Valerie seem to have it all. Theydecide to relocate there permanently, to spend the rest of their lives in thisexotic paradise. Then Muslim extremists blow up the resort, killing most of thevacationers, including Valérie.

At the end of the novel, we find Michel where we found him at the beginning: alone.He returns to Thailand to spend the rest of his days beneath the sun, reminiscingon the happiness he briefly possessed. He gives up on life, and Michel’s descriptionsof his loss are devastating: “Every time I heard that a Palestinian terrorist,child, or pregnant woman had been gunned down on the Gaza Strip, I felt a quiverof enthusiasm that it meant one less Muslim.”

While that passage was sited in the court proceedings against Houelle-becq, aswell as in several recent articles as an example of his alleged racism, it’s importantto note that on the next to the last page of the novel he writes the following:“For the West, I do not feel hatred; at most I feel a great contempt. I know onlythat every single one of us reeks of selfishness, masochism and death. We havecreated a system in which it has simply become impossible to live; and what’smore, we continue to export it.”

In the wake of his ambiguous message and the scandal it has provoked in the Frenchmedia, the most overlooked feature of Houellebecq’s writing is his humanism. Inaddition to being cited as a racist, he is frequently accused of being a misogynist,as his female characters often end up dead, damaged or reduced to sexual objects.

But what his critics ignore is the fact that his female characters are equal tohis male characters intellectually, sexually and emotionally. This is a veryrare accomplishment for any male author.

What’s more, Platform gives voice to the plight of the mediocre and selfishmiddle-class alienated figure who has nothing to offer society, and is, for allintents and purposes, thought to be useless. What makes Houellebecq’s ordinarycharacters so extraordinary is their alarming awareness, their consciousness oftheir own painful situation combined with the ability to endure it.

Despite all the controversy surrounding his work, Houellebecq is very much groundedin a proud French literary tradition. The bleak perspective found in his booksis reminiscent of Baudelaire and Sartre, although the writer he calls to mindrepeatedly is Céline, whose Journey to the End of the Night was deemed “nihilistic”by his contemporaries, an adjective that has also been applied to Houellebecq.

Like Céline more than half a century ago, much has been made of Houelle-becq’sseemingly outrageous behavior in the French media, which is curious consideringthat he is writing in the language of the country that also gave us the “deathof the author” and the “society of the spectacle.”

“I seem to have a gift for insults and provocation,” he once said to an interviewer.“It adds a certain spice to my novels. It’s quite humorous, no?”

Houellebecq’s dirtiest transgression isn’t his excessive sex scenes, nor his characters’racist diatribes. Rather, it’s the simple fact that he makes us laugh at thingswe’re not supposed to laugh at. In penning such memorable lines as, “Intellectually,I could manage to feel a certain attraction to Muslim vaginas,” Houellebecq smearsshit all over the politically correct reality we’ve been conditioned to accept.

Whether one accepts the view that Houellebecq is too naive to realize how shockinghis frankness sounds aloud, or that he’s merely a provocateur who gets off onusing a not-so-subtle rhetoric, what’s certain is that by forging his own platforminstead of regurgitating any of the predictable political positions, Houellebecqhas secured a place for himself as one of the most important French novelist ofhis generation.